Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/293

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PAUL CLIFFORD.
285

and the haughty impolicy of its tone, been so far guided by its course, as to settle into any state of mind clearly favourable to him, or the reverse; so that each man waited for his neighbour to speak first, in order that he might find, as it were, in another, a kind of clue to the indistinct and excited feelings which wanted utterance in himself.

The Judge, who had been from the first attracted by the air and aspect of the Prisoner, had perhaps, notwithstanding the hardness of his mind, more approvingly than any one present, listened to the defence; for in the scorn of the hollow institutions, and the mock honesty of social life, so defyingly manifested by the prisoner, Brandon recognised elements of mind remarkably congenial to his own, and this sympathy was heightened by the hardihood of physical nerve and moral intrepidity displayed by the Prisoner; qualities which, among men of a similar mould, often form the strongest motive of esteem, and sometimes (as we read of in the Imperial Corsican and his chiefs,) the only point of attraction! Brandon was however soon recalled to his cold self, by a murmur of vague applause circling throughout the com-